Betrayals (17 page)

Janet straightened, irritated at herself now for pleading. “So you get out!” she said. “You've delivered your message.”

The man was slow in standing, not wanting the departure to appear to be on her terms. “Remember what I've said, lady: remember what I've said.”

“Get out, messenger boy!”

He left the room as slowly as he'd stood, but with his face burning. Janet almost slammed the door behind him, but instead she closed it as quietly as possible. She remained with her back pressed against it, staring into the room. She was shaking again, worse than she had after the encounter with the policeman. She hadn't known what to expect but certainly she hadn't considered this, a procession of men with a procession of threats. Why not? she demanded of herself. Wasn't that how Willsher had behaved in Washington and McDermott in London and Partington, earlier that day? Not so openly or so brutally, perhaps, but there wasn't any real difference. Damn them, she thought: damn them all.

She stared at the telephone when it rang, not at first moving to answer it. When she did, she instantly recognized Partington's voice.

“I'm most awfully sorry,” the diplomat said. “Tomorrow isn't as convenient as I thought it might be. Could we leave it that I'll call you again?”

“Of course,” Janet agreed, actually relieved. She had Larnaca marina to visit. And the dives of Zenon Square and Kitieus Street, as well. The
repetitious American hadn't been as smart as he obviously thought he was.

As she replaced the receiver Janet realized, unhappily, that her period had started. A woman, she thought, bitterly.

13

I
t was raining, the storm hurling itself against her window and making black what should have been the squinting brightness of early morning. Something else—that this was not a place of perpetual sunshine—that she had forgotten. Oddly, the awareness upset her more than the previous day's confrontations: she'd imagined, at least, she'd remember the weather in an area where she'd spent so much time growing up. Her room overlooked the junction of Achaeans with Metokhi Street and Janet stood at the drip-splashed and trickling glass, gazing beyond towards the Turkish occupation in the center of Nicosia. On a clear day she supposed she could have actually seen the mountains separating Nicosia from Kyrenia but now everything was cloaked in bulge-bellied clouds, anxious to relieve themselves. Male or female clouds? she wondered. Female: they were squatting. At least, she thought, the heat would not be so bad today. And at once contradicted herself. If the rain didn't let up it could be positively worse: steamy and monsoon-like. What would a day such as this be like for John, wherever he was? No air conditioning: probably no window or vent, to provide even air, steamy or monsoon-like. Maybe not a hole in the ground or a bucket to pee into.

“Poor darling!” said Janet, aloud. “My poor darling!” She was talking to a different ghost, she realized, abruptly. No! Hank was the ghost: Hank was dead. John wasn't dead: she was sure he wasn't dead.
Knew
he wasn't dead. John was alive: alive and waiting to be rescued. “I'm here,” she said, unashamedly, no longer seeing the darkened, rain-lashed view beyond the window. “I'm trying: please believe that I'm trying.” John
would
believe her, she knew: would trust her. Not like everyone else.

Janet squeezed her eyes shut, against the rain and the imagery, not opening them until she turned back into the room. The weather didn't matter: nothing mattered more than finding the way—the link or the thread or whatever—to John. And she
would
find it. No threatening policeman with absurd moustaches or threatening American with no name or patronizing diplomat was going to frighten her away. “Beat you!” she said to them now, louder than the first time she'd talked to herself but still unashamed. “I'm going to beat the lot of you bastards!”

Around her the hotel stayed eerily quiet. The rain splattered noisily and insistently against the window. “Beat you,” repeated Janet, quieter now and more to herself than before, a personal encouragement.

She put on jeans and a baggy workshirt and loafers. In the hotel coffee shop, where she ordered coffee with rolls, Janet tried to study everyone around her. Was she under surveillance, from Zarpas's people or from the Americans? Several times other customers answered her stare—two men hopefully—and very quickly Janet stopped trying. She was, she acknowledged, the amateur that she was constantly accused of being; so what chance did she have, if everyone else was professional? None, she answered herself: another fantasy exercise. Preposterous to attempt, then.

Unsure how the Cypriot policeman intended to monitor her movements—but knowing that hotel cab drivers would be an obvious source—Janet disdained a taxi, deciding instead to rent an Avis car. She drove towards Larnaca. Twice she stopped at lean-to souvenir stalls, to let traffic pass, and staged another more protracted halt, at Kosi, for more coffee that she did not want. By that time the clouds had pulled back to the mountains where they belonged and everywhere was drying out, the roads and the houses steaming under the displaced and disgruntled sun. Janet chose a table outside the cafe, which the waiter had to wipe dry, as he did the seat, and she sat at once and tried to memorize the cars that went by directly after her. There were so many that quickly she became confused. A feeling of impotence started to rise, but she refused to let it grip her. What was the point of becoming upset at an inability to do something for which she wasn't trained?

She entered Larnaca on Grivas Digenis Avenue and kept driving eastwards and by the time she passed the Zeno stadium she was getting snatches of the sea, silvered now by a white sun from an unclouded, uncluttered sky. She spotted one of the faded and bent direction signs to the Beirut ferries at Karaolis and Demetriou so she went to the left. There was a dog's-leg she was forced to follow and when Janet reached the T-junction she looked for some other marker and almost at once smiled at the sign for Kitieus Street. At last, she thought, something was becoming easy: it had taken long enough. She turned left because she could tell it to be the route into the center of the town, seeking somewhere to park the car and again, practically immediately, saw the Othello Cinema.

She drove into its car park and despite her previous resolution remained in the car after stopping it, alert for any car following her in. None did.

The asphalt was already baked hot underfoot when Janet stepped from the car. She hurried away from the vehicle and the cinema, apprehensive of some challenge against her parking there, but none came. On Kitieus Street she hesitated, unsure which direction to take until she saw a sign to the marina. Following it, she realized the street led directly into the square that the crew-cut, unnamed American of the previous afternoon had identified and, illogically, she felt further encouraged. She went down one side of Zenon Square to emerge on Athens Street and stopped, gazing out over the sea.

Beirut was in a direct line, she knew. Just over a hundred miles: only a hundred miles between her and John. Dear God, how she wished it were as easy as that, simply measured in distance! I'm trying, she thought, echoing in her mind her empty bedroom conversation of that morning: I'm trying, my darling.

The marina and pier were very obvious, behind the harbor groin. Janet walked unhurriedly past the hotel and apartment blocks, glancing up to the balconies and loggias where oiled people were already spreadeagled and relaxed, grilling themselves. No worries beyond diarrhea, incorrect camera exposure and forgetting to send holiday postcards to their mothers, thought Janet, enviously.

The bent arm of the pier and the furthest barrier of the marina created an almost enclosed square for the yachts and motorcraft to be moored, against the spread-apart fingers of the floating pontoons. Janet hesitated near the bar named appropriately the Marina Pub, gazing down at the assembly. She'd found the marina and she'd found Zenon Square and she'd found Kitieus Street. And what the hell was she going to do now? How, from among all the innocent yachtsmen and holidaymakers in the bars and restaurants, was she supposed to isolate someone with links to religious fanatics or gangsters in Beirut? Janet fought against this new despair, forcing herself forward into the marina, just needing the movement.

All around the boats' fittings tinkled and chimed, like chattering birds, and the floating dock pontoons shifted just slightly but disconcertingly beneath her feet. Remembering, suddenly, John's fat-bellied boat in which they'd spent so much time the previous summer, Janet stared about her, looking for something like it. She took her time before giving up, resigned, unable to find anything even vaguely resembling it. But this was hardly John's sort of place; this was designer deckwear and remembering the ice for the drinks before casting off and getting back in time for cocktails. Janet continued slowly up and down the docks, gradually discerning a pattern. The crafts were graded, the smaller boats assigned the area near the pier but increasing in size finally to the large, oceangoing vessels against the far edge of the marina, where the offices and chandlers appeared to be.

Janet hesitated, trying to encompass the entire area. She supposed the small boats to her right were capable of reaching the Lebanon, those with sails certainly, but it would be an uncertain crossing. From her limited sailing experience Janet guessed the middle pontoon, which she had not yet reached, was where the yachts began which could comfortably make the journey. She went to it and strolled casually seawards, head moving from side to side as she studied each mooring. The yachts seemed roughly divided equally, half open, either occupied or preparing to sail, half secured and battened. Near the pontoon's end a yacht was open but with its sails reefed and its fenders out.
Journey's End
, Janet read, from the stern markings: registered at Falmouth. In the stern a woman lay prostrate on an air-mattress, a bikini wisped over her nipples and crotch, twice as much material employed in the hardscarf protecting her blonde hair from bleaching further in the sun.

“Wonderful day,” said Janet.

The woman's eyes opened, in apparent surprise. She remained lying as she was.

“Wonderful day,” repeated Janet.

The woman moved, but slowly, easing up on to her elbow and using her other hand to shield her eyes while she squinted up at the pontoon. “What?”

“You sail all the way here from England?” asked Janet, unwilling to repeat her fatuous opening for a third time.

“Two years ago,” said the sunbather. “We leave it here now. You have a boat here on the marina?”

Janet squatted to take the sun from the other woman's eyes, shaking her head. “Just looking around and admiring,” she said. “How often do you get out?”

The woman shifted, bringing her legs up in front of her and wrapping her arms around them. “Not as much as we should, unfortunately.”

Janet hesitated, not knowing how to continue. “Ever get across there?” she said, clumsily, jerking her head seawards.

The woman actually looked beyond the marina and then back again, frowning. “Where?” she demanded.

“Lebanon,” said Janet. She was handling it all very badly, she thought. But how
could
she handle it!

The woman snorted a laugh, incredulous. “Are you serious?” she demanded.

“I just wondered,” said Janet, retreating.

“You'd have to be out of your mind to go anywhere near that coastline!” insisted the woman.

Maybe I am, thought Janet. She said: “Some people must.”

The woman cocked her head curiously to one side and did not respond immediately. When she did the words came slowly. “Mad people, like I said.”

Janet desperately searched for another way to phrase the question but could not find one. Directly she said: “Know any?”

The woman pulled herself tighter together on the mattress and stared at Janet. Janet guessed the woman was trying to memorize her features and thought, Oh shit! Abruptly the woman said: “What's going on!”